MoQ Cluster Extension

draft-lcurley-moq-cluster-00 | Individual submission | Submitted 2026-08-04 | 10 pages | Datatracker

2026-08-05: New individual I-D — draft-lcurley-moq-cluster-00 “MoQ Cluster Extension” posted 2026-08-04 by Luke Curley, one of a three-draft batch he submitted the same ~02:08 UTC minute alongside [[moq-timestamp|draft-lcurley-moq-timestamp-01]] and draft-lcurley-moq-hang-02. It gives a datatracker home to the relay-mesh / cost-based-routing work that moq has been building in-code for weeks (Hop IDs, cumulative route cost, gossip peering) — and moq-dev implemented this exact extension over IETF moq-transport in PR #2629 “implement MoQ Cluster extension over moq-transport” (merged 2026-08-05, +2662/−408). The in-repo draft-authoring pass that produced the text landed as PR #2607 “drafts: render gate, Hop ID 0, cluster rename, and a simplification pass” — the same in-code-before-Datatracker pattern the moq-lite -05/-06 wire followed. Individual submission, not WG-adopted; logged as a first-look. See moq-dev, discussions-2026-08.

Author

• Luke Curley (kixelated@gmail.com)

Abstract

This document defines a clustering extension for MoQ Transport, used to build a mesh of relays. Each namespace advertisement carries the ordered list of Hop IDs it has traversed, starting with the original publisher, plus the accumulated cost of that path. A receiver uses the list to detect routing loops and to identify which advertisements come from the same publisher, choosing the lowest-cost path among equivalent advertisements.

Key Technical Details

• Hop ID path vector: every namespace advertisement (announce) carries the ordered sequence of relay Hop IDs it passed through, beginning with the origin publisher. This is a path-vector routing mechanism (analogous to BGP AS-path) built at the MoQ announcement layer.
• Accumulated path cost: alongside the Hop ID list, each advertisement carries the summed cost of the path, so a relay/receiver can pick the cheapest route among multiple advertisements for the same content.
• Loop detection: because the full hop list travels with the advertisement, a relay that finds its own Hop ID already in the list drops the advertisement — preventing routing loops in a gossip mesh without a separate control protocol.
• Same-publisher identification: advertisements that share an origin Hop ID are recognized as interchangeable routes to one publisher, which is what lets cost comparison be meaningful (PR #2613 scoped route cost to interchangeable advertisements).
• Hop ID 0: the origin/self hop is normalized to Hop ID 0 in the -00 text (part of PR #2607’s “Hop ID 0” cleanup).

Relationship to other work

• moq-net implementation (moq): the cluster extension is the standards form of the cost-based cache-aware routing moq-dev shipped July 20 (PR #2424 route by cumulative cost on lite-06 announcements) plus the earlier vendored route-cost Internet-Draft (PR #2179). PR #2629 (merged 2026-08-05, +2662/−408) implements the extension over IETF moq-transport (not just moq-lite), extending the mesh beyond configured routes — complementing the Aug-1 mDNS local-network peer-mesh front (PR #2585).
• moq-lite-06 relay-hops: moq-dev has been aligning relay-hops with moq-lite-06 in code (PR #2578 / PR #2581); the cluster draft is the transport-level, container-agnostic articulation of that hop/cost model.
• Sibling drafts: submitted together with [[moq-timestamp|draft-lcurley-moq-timestamp-01]] (age-based relay decisions) and draft-lcurley-moq-hang-02 (conferencing profile) — the same “prototype in moq-dev/moq, then surface as a portable transport extension” workflow as moq-lite and compressed-mp4.

Notes

Individual submission by Luke Curley, not adopted by the MOQ working group. Posted 2026-08-04, 10 pages. It is the first MoQ relay-clustering / routing Internet-Draft the wiki tracks, and turns weeks of moq-dev in-repo mesh/route-cost code into a citable spec.

Links

• Datatracker: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-lcurley-moq-cluster/
• Implementation: moq-dev/moq PR #2629 (MoQ Cluster extension over moq-transport — merged 2026-08-05)

Related

• moq-transport — the transport this extension clusters
• moq-lite — Luke Curley’s simplified transport, where the hop/route-cost work first shipped
• moq-timestamp — sibling extension submitted the same day
• moq-dev — implementation
• luke-curley — author
• relays — relay/CDN architecture